


Freedom

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [34]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 17:07:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11384616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: In the wake of Furiosa's collapse, who will speak for the Wives?





	Freedom

Furiosa fell. Toast watched it happen, frozen at her side. It was Capable who reached out to try and catch her, it was Cheedo who cried out and pulled Furiosa onto her side so that she could breathe a little easier.

It was Toast who cocked the hammer of Joe’s pistol and pressed it against Corpus’ thin-boned chest. “Listen to me,” she said, Tarl snarling at her heel. “Listen to _us._ All of you!” The silence spread around them like ripples in the Vault pool, steady and stifling. Toast didn’t take her eyes off of Corpus, but she felt a thousand Wretched and Pups and lift Rats watching her. “My name is Toast the Knowing, and here are the things I know. Joe was a lying old man. He was cruel and vain, and he was _never_ the Immortan he promised you.” Corpus choked out a wordless argument, and Toast pressed the muzzle of the gun into his shade-soft skin. “We came back to the Citadel to say this. _We are not things!_ We are not breeders, we are not War fodder, we are not Wretched. We are _people_ , with daemons, and we deserve better than Joe gave us.”

Toast leaned close to Corpus, and it seemed to her that even the waterfall had gone silent. Listening. “We came back to tear down Joe’s cult from the ground up. We came back to build something _better_. Now give me a reason not to kill you, little man. I had enough of your snickering when Joe brought you to the Vault. I had enough of your egging Rictus on. I’ve had enough of your slimy words, as bad as the Organic for treating us like things. Tell me why I shouldn’t end Joe’s blood right now. Spill it the way Furiosa did, to save us.”

Corpus could only look at her, terrified and small, his chest heaving with malformed breath. In the end, it was Capable who broke the silence and brought back the sound of water rushing in Toast’s ears. “No unnecessary killing,” she said, coming to put a hand on Toast’s arm. “That’s what she said.”

“How do we know?” Toast asked through teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached. Everyone was still watching them, still frozen. They were not yet safe. They would never be safe. Killing Corpus might make them a little bit safer. The thoughts ran in circles around her head.

“No killing is necessary until we make it so,” Capable spoke like she actually believed that. “Killing Nux would have doomed us, after all.”

At the War Boy’s name, Toast found that her hand shook. She took the muzzle of the gun from Corpus’s skin, seeing the little red mark it had left. Much less messy than a bullet hole. Whispers spread through the Pups, echoes of a Splendid Angharad that they would never know.

 _No unnecessary killing,_ they said. _Nux, the War Boy. Did he die Historic?_

The lift guards came forward, wading through Wretched and white Pups. Their aprons were black rubber spattered with oil and other, less viscous things. Toast’s hand was shaking too hard to point the pistol—she would have shot them if she tried. Instead, she took her finger off the trigger, and prayed to a goddess who’d died bloody on the Fury Road.

The first lift guard took off his mask, baring a human face lumped with scars and a soft chin. His daemon was a three-legged dog. “I don’t understand,” he told them, a heavy shotgun held loosely in one hand.

“My name is Capable,” the redheaded Wife said softly. She reached out and took the guard’s heavy, callused fist. She didn’t even hesitate, though at her side Toast flinched. “What’s yours?”

“They called me Skull-crack. I—the Immortan—“

“He’s dead.” Capable said, and Toast had never heard her sound more intense. “He’s gone. We are what’s left. Will you help us?” Skull-crack looked at her hand in his, her pale skin and bones as fragile as her daemon’s. At their feet, Caelai stood on her hind legs to lick at the crusted goo on the dog-daemon’s eyelids.

The lift guard laid his gun at Capable’s booted feet. Kneeling, he was little taller than the Pups surrounding them. “Yes,” he said, and if his voice was hoarse no one would tell him it was weak to cry. “I served the Immortan as well as I could. I would have died for him.” Capable shook her head violently and knelt with him.

“The point is _not_ to die,” she told him, even as Toast felt her empty chest crack open. “The point is to live while we still can. All of us. To live.”

**Author's Note:**

> a short chapter for you all while I chip away at the beginning of this new Citadel. I have so many things written for 50, 100, a 150 days in. :(


End file.
